Summary of Our Most Recent Genealogy Program That Was Held on March 8, 2011 (Pictures Included)

We had our most recent Genealogy Program at the Schaumburg Township District Library on Tuesday evening, March 8, 2011. It was one of our quarterly “break out” sessions. We did not have a speaker for the program. Instead we had our “break out” work groups giving the opportunity for those interested in various ethnic areas of research to sit with fellow researchers and both learn new things about the topic as well as to share items of interest to help make researching the topic more productive.

Early Arrivals At the Polish Research Table

We had group tables set for:

Irish Researchers

German Researchers

Polish Researchers

Czech Researchers

Italian Researchers

Scandinavian Researchers

British Isles Researchers

Colonial American

General “Troubleshooting” Group

Beginner’s Group

We also had the laptop computer set up and connected to the projector to allow anyone to use during the session.

It Is Always Nice To See Someone Helping Someone Else on Connecting to Our WiFi Network

We had a total of 43 researchers in attendance for the program. This was one of our larger turnouts of researchers for the quarterly breakout sessions program.

It did appear that the vast majority of attendees were situated at the Irish, Polish and German tables as well as at the Beginner’s Table that was being led by myself.

We had 6 new people attend the program. I asked them to introduce themselves. Each was given a welcoming package of genealogical material to assist them in their research.

I then minimally reviewed the “handouts” package electronically from what was posted on this blog for this program, focusing just on the upcoming programs for a variety of genealogical societies in the area. Just look at the right sidebar of this blog for an “archive” of past “Newsletters” and “Handouts”. I want to use the handouts to keep those in attendance informed of upcoming genealogy programs, news of note in genealogy as well as some summaries of interesting magazine/journal articles that seemed to really hit home with some new research information on a particular genealogical topic.

I am leaning more to just verbally making note in the Handouts Review of just those

Boy! WE Had A Very Popular Irish Research Table At Our March 2011 Breakout Evening!!

upcoming programs local to our area. Because there is a great deal of detail in the handouts and they are available online for easy access, searching, saving and linking to links within the package, I wanted to forego repeating much of that and leave it to the researcher to review the material in more detail at their leisure. This would afford me the chance to start the breakout groups closer to 7:45 PM rather than 8:00 PM.

We had a table full at the Beginner’s table having about 18 people sitting there listening to me give advice and direction on what to focus on and how to progress with research.

Early Arrivals At Our German Research Table for the March 2011 Breakout Evening Program

I especially want to say a big “thank you” to those that were still there at 9:30 PM and helped rearrange the room back to its original arrangement of the tables and chairs. I could not do it without your help!! Thank you, all of you!!

I also want to thank those of you that took many of the newcomers under your wings to help them with individual one on one time while I was busy assisting others. You are so sharing! You know who you are! Thank you so much again for offering such personal assistance.

Based on an observation, I would certainly encourage future participants at these quarterly sessions to consider bringing in a laptop or a notebook to have to use at the table you choose to participate at. Because of our wonderful Wi-Fi setup, you can easily tap into our Internet setup directly from your laptop or notebook and not have to worry about using our own laptop/projector set up to show someone some piece of information. It looked like at least one person at each of the major tables had a laptop. It looked like it worked out quite well. Please bring your laptop or notebook to these special sessions in the future because it looks like the work at the tables can be even more productive using the laptop or notebook to tap into the Internet via our own Wi Fi setup.

Two Of Our British Isles Researchers Arriving Early for the March 2011 Breakout Program

Please remember that we have these special “break out” sessions in the months of March, June, September and December on the 2nd Tuesday evening of the month.

We certainly had a good turnout of very highly motivated researchers who were craving to learn new things and to share the things they know with others. My hats off to all of you for such enthusiasm you brought to the program.

Thank you again to all of you that came out to participate.

We hope to see you again at our upcoming programs.

Keep coming back to this blog to stay in touch with what is going on about our genealogy programs as well as other genealogy programs in our general area.